The Beginner’s Guide to Automating Your Business

Intro

In this video, I’m going to walk you through how to start automating parts of
your business. Even if you’ve never thought about automation before or
you’re kind of convinced that it’s all just too technical, you don’t need to be
a tech expert. You don’t need to understand code. You just need to know
what you’re spending your time on and be open to the idea that a lot of it can
happen without you.

If you’re new here, my name is Chris and I’ve helped hundreds of businesses get
more from the software they already own and use automation and AI to save time
and grow faster.

If you’re new to automation and AI, how to implement it in your business, you’re
not alone. We’ve all been through this. It can feel overwhelming at first, like
there’s too much tech, there’s too many tools, and not enough time to figure it
all out and where to start. But I promise once you get past the first few
steps, it starts to make a lot more sense.

So why automate?

Well, for small business owners especially, time is everything. And if you’re doing the same
tasks over and over again, so think about replying to emails, scheduling
calls, appointments, following up with leads, chances are there’s a way to
automate at least part of that. And when you do, you save time, you reduce the
human error, and you might make make everything run that little bit smoother.

There’s a stat that I came across recently. It says that businesses that
use automation tools are 20% more likely to see revenue growth. And who wouldn’t
want a bit of that? It’s not that bad for something that’s working away in the
background while you sleep in some cases. And in this video, I’m going to
take you through what automation is and what it isn’t.  The tools I recommend
if you’re just getting started and then a few real world examples from some of
my clients including kind of what worked and what didn’t
and then how you can start small test
things out and build up confidence as
you go.

What is Business Automation?

So let’s get started. Here’s the
basics. Business automation is just a fancy way of saying, “Let’s get the
software to do the repetitive stuff for you so you don’t have to.” That’s it. No
robots, no sci-fi. It’s about setting up simple systems that run in the
background and take care of tasks that you’re probably doing manually right
now.

So, think about when someone fills in a form on your website, the details
are added to your CRM and it’s automatically assigned to someone.
Invoices that get sent as soon as a job is marked complete in your project
management tool, social media posts that are created for you and scheduled in
advance instead of you scrambling away to get a post every day. or maybe
follow-up reminders uh that trigger when someone hasn’t responded after a few
days. It’s these little things repeated hundreds of times over that quietly eat up your time.

With automation, you take a few minutes to set it up. You set it up once and then it keeps
working for you every day after that. No chasing, no forgetting, no late night
admin. Why is it worth doing at all? For most small business owners or employees,

Why Automate Your Business?

time is the one thing that you never
have enough of. You’re juggling
everything. Sales, marketing, admin,
operations, often doing it all yourself
or with a very small team. And that’s
where automation steps in. It’s not
about replacing people. It’s about
removing the repetitive, low value tasks
that eat into your day so you can focus
on the stuff that actually moves your
business forward. And here’s why it
matters. Firstly, it saves time, the
biggest one. Even automating a few small
things can free up hours each week. It
reduces errors. So once it’s set up
correctly, no more missed calls, no more
miss follow-ups, no more double bookings
or forgotten invoices.
And then third, it makes you actually
look more professional. So you reply
really swiftly, you get consistent
messaging, and you have a smooth
process. And if you’re planning to grow,
this is where automation really becomes
essential. You simply can’t scale by
doing everything yourself and doing
everything manually. At some point,
things start slipping through the cracks
or you burn out trying to keep up.
Automation
gives you breathing space. It means you
can onboard more clients, deliver
consistently, and spend more time on
strategy, sales, or just getting some
head space rather than being stuck in
the day-to-day.
You’re still in control, but you’re not
doing everything. So, now you know why

Steps to Get Started with Automation

automation matters. Let’s look at how to
actually do it. It’s not about
overhauling your entire business
overnight. The trick is to start small,
really small in some cases. Build your
confidence and let the tools do the
heavy lifting. So, I have a simple
four-step process to follow.
Step one, let’s look at identifying the
repetitive tasks in your business. Start
by asking yourself, what am I doing over
and over again that a machine could
probably handle? So, it could be sending
out the same follow-up email every time
someone books a call, copying contract
details from one system to another,
manually creating invoice uh invoices
every time a job is done. Uh make a
list. Uh you’ll be surprised how much
time you’re spending on things that
don’t actually need the human touch.
Step two,
choose the right tools for automation.
The right tools and the right software.
Once you’ve spotted the repetitive
stuff, it’s kind of time to match the
right tool to the task. And there’s a
few good starting points. So, Zapia and
Make connect different apps together.
So, when someone completes that form on
your website, you can automatically add
them to your CRM, put in the contact
details, send a thank you email, um to
the person who filled in the form. Um,
Pipe Drive, uh, I use it. It’s great if
you need a full CRM and marketing
system. It can handle lead tracking,
emails, task reminders, all
automatically.
air table that I use in some of my
business OS systems. It’s a bit like a
spreadsheet, but it actually does stuff.
So, you can track projects, clients,
inventory, uh, and then trigger actions
when things change.
Don’t get distracted by the shiny
features. Start with the tool that
actually solves your problem.
Step three is start small by automating
one task or process at a time. And this
is where quite a lot of people run into
problems trying to do too much too soon.
Start small. Firstly, you don’t need to
automate everything in one go. In fact,
please don’t
pick one thing, something really simple,
preferably something that’s really
annoying, and just fix that first. So,
for example,
sending a welcome email when someone
signs up to your newsletter or setting
up a recurring summary of data for
monthly reporting.
Get that one thing working. then move on
to the next and it builds your
confidence and keeps it manageable.
Step four, important test. Test and
refine your automation workflows as you
go. Uh automation is not a set and
forget thing. Uh you’ll need to tweak
things as you go.
Maybe your emails are going into spam.
Maybe a step gets skipped if someone
fills in the form in a certain way. This
is normal. So, for example, one of my
clients set up an automation uh to send
out invoices, but didn’t realize uh it
was actually sending draft versions. Uh
super quick fix, but one you can only
really spot when you really test it.
Well, the key here is, as I’ve
mentioned, testing each step. Try it out
yourself and just check what your
customers are going to see. Before you
dive in too far, it’s worth knowing
Common Mistakes to Avoid
where things can go wrong. Most
automation mistakes aren’t technical.
They’re about rushing in without a plan,
picking the wrong tools, or trying to do
too much all at once. Uh there’s a few
issues uh that I see most often, and
here are the top three. So, the first
one is is trying to automate without
clear goals.
Automation works best when you know
exactly, and I mean exactly what you’re
trying to improve. If you’re just adding
tools because you’ve heard they’re
pretty good, you’ll likely end up with
more work and not less. So, having a
client come to me and say, “I want to
automate my entire business.” is a red
flag. It’s just too much.
So just start by reducing 30 minutes a
week with an automation and just build
from there.
Number two is kind of over complicating
workflows. And it’s easy to get excited
about a major 10step automation that
does absolutely everything. But the more
steps you add, the more things can
break.
uh the harder it becomes to fix when
you’ve got those 10 steps in it as
opposed to when you have less. So keep
it simple. One input, one output, one
operation. Once that’s working, just
layer in another step and another step
and build from there.
Uh number three of the top three is is
choosing tools that really don’t
integrate well with each other. Uh this
is a big one. uh you set up three
different apps, for example, only to
find that one of them can’t talk to the
others or you need to update a
subscription
just to get the basic info across. And
this is really a catch uh that that’s
quite prevalent at the moment is you
need that additional functionality and
the software provider will want you to
upgrade to the most expensive package to
do so. There are often ways around this.
So look at what other solutions are
available to you.
So as an example,
one of my clients wanted to automate
their entire sales pipeline in a week.
They picked five tools, none of which
integrated particularly well. And within
a few days, not surprisingly, they’d
lost emails and worse had duplicate res
records and sadly had missed an
opportunity.
So, we scaled it back to just the one
automation when the leads came in. And
then it created a task in their project
management tool. And then it triggered a
simple email, a simple single email. I
should point out it worked. And then we
built from there, layering more of their
desired changes on the top of that one
thing that we knew was working really
Final Thoughts – Next Steps
well. So there you are. You now know
what business automation actually is and
what is not, why it’s essential for
small business owners and employees
looking to save time and to scale. Uh,
I’ve given you the four steps to get
started and I’ve given you uh some of
the big simple common mistakes to avoid
and hopefully I’ve showed you how to
build consistent lowmaintenance systems
that grow with you. If this is something
that your business needs, but you don’t
have the time or the headsp space or the
resources to figure it all out, get in
touch. I help clients every week save
hours, cut down on manual work, and
scale faster using simple practical
automation.
And if you enjoyed this video, you might
like this one or this one uh which is
also more on business automation.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in
the next video.